Where Are Your Priorities?

Montana women are lucky to have champions like Jon Tester in the Senate to fight for their rights

By Judy Rosenfeld-Cox // Feb 8, 2018

It has been more than four months that government funding has continued on a temporary basis, yet Senate Republicans have apparently decided that women having reproductive health care choices is a bigger threat to our country than the fact that we literally don’t have a budget. I’m glad that Sen. Jon Tester had the Montana common sense to vote against the GOP’s latest abortion ban – surely Congress has more important things to do than yet another insulting attempt to take choices away from women and put them into the hands of Washington politicians.

In a shameful turn of events, Sen. Steve Daines voted to endanger the health of Montana women. A “yes” vote could only have been taken by someone who believes women are incapable of making critical decisions for themselves – and by someone who is ignorant of the complex medical situations that women face when they’re forced to consider abortion care after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Only a small fraction of abortion procedures are performed later in pregnancy, and are often as a result of medical complications in wanted pregnancies.

For Daines to have voted to take away choices from women facing those kinds of serious medical circumstances is not only unconscionable, but it’s dangerous. Women’s lives are at risk when health care isn’t decided between them and their doctors, but between them and Washington politicians. Montana women are lucky to have champions like Jon Tester in the Senate to fight for their rights, their safety, and their medical privacy. I am proud to be represented by someone who unapologetically stands for women and defends our personal freedoms, no matter what.